Week 22-29th Feb,2016
• Polling for 2019 general elections will be conducted through paper trail-based electronic voting machines to “enhance transparency”.
• The paper audit trail machine or Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) was first introduced by the Commission in 2013 in order to enhance transparency in the polls process and increase electorate’s confidence that their vote goes without error to their desired candidate.
• Once the vote is polled, the VVPAT linked EVM immediately takes a printout and it is preserved for later use to tally in case there is a dispute in the final result.
• Mr. Zaidi, who was speaking on the topic ‘Leveraging Technology for Transparent and Credible Elections’, stressed that secrecy of voters will be zealously preserved.
• Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi also said that voting through the internet is not on EC’s agenda in the near future though it is going to use information and communication technology (ICT) in a big way to reach the voters in the coming days.